Long before drone photography was commonplace, Edward Burtynsky was working to solve the problem of “trying to get my Hasselblad up in a helicopter without me,” as a he told an interviewer in 2011. A new show on view at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles until April 22 presents some of the results of Burtynsky’s aerial work, made from drones, helicopters and planes. Among the subjects are open-pit copper mines in New Mexico, gold mining in Australia and timber harvesting in Nigeria, the latter from Burtynsky’s forthcoming project on the Anthropocene, the proposed current era of human impact on the earth. The images were made for several different projects, but they share the lush palette and precise compositions that have become Burtynsky’s trademark. Together, the gallery writes, his images describe “the cumulative impact of industrialization with a sense of beauty and consciousness.”

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